1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a content providing device, content providing method, program storage media, content providing system and content reservation control method, and profit give-back system, and more particularly, is suitably applied to a computer network system providing a content through the Internet for example.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the case that a content consisting of images and/or voices created by an individual is provided via the Internet in a computer network system, it has been generally practiced up until now that he/she establishes homepages of his/her own created using a personal computer.
In such a case where an individual opens homepages as in the above, a user acquires a homepage creation program by means of a personal computer, based on which homepages are created, hyper-linked with a plurality of content, which are stored in the server of an Internet service provider (this is referred to as “ISP” hereinafter).
And, the ISP provides homepages from the server to a client accessing it through the Internet, and when the anchor on the homepages is clicked, a hyper-linked content s provided subsequently.
In such a computer network system structured as described above, the same content is to be supplied continually to a client accessing it until the content of a homepage opened is renewed, which has posed a problem of the client getting tired of it.
Also, in the computer network system, when an ISP provides plural types of contents to a plurality of clients at the same time responding to demands received simultaneously for plural types of contents hyper-linked on the homepage from a plurality of clients, there has been a problem that the contents are not transmitted swiftly due to the large consumption of the bandwidth of network resources such as lines.
Furthermore, in such a computer network system structured as described above, even when a content is provided on a personal homepage created by a user through an ISP, it is not always the case that a large number of clients access the personal homepage, and so there has been a problem that a content created by an individual is not necessarily provided widely to many and unspecific persons.
Still further, in such a computer network system structured as described above, the data of homepages stored in the server of an ISP is to read out responding to a demand from a client, which is provided over the Internet, however, there is a limitation to the number of the data of homepages to be provided simultaneously from the server due to the limitations of the processing performance of the server and the bandwidth of a line.
Because of the above, in a computer network system, there has been a problem that it comes to be hard to provide homepages swiftly to all of a plurality of clients when the number of demands exceeds the upper limitation due to the occurrence of a large number of demands for various homepages from the server of the ISP at one time.